Tag: denver

Two Poems | Ted Vaca

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Image: NKMG

The Spring Has Been Wet

BY TED VACA

drowning those on the surface
underneath it’s downpour

you are very much 
as the spring
this year

we can only pray
        hope is real
practice deep breaths
	plan in positive accord

as in what may grow

closer

perhaps the squirrels
will not eat the strawberries
but better
to put a barrier between
them and the fruit

I’m sure the weeds
and wild grass will
stay a few weeks
more green before 
the summer sizzle

maybe we may
take advantage of
both the growing tumble
and the withering

to pull from the rain
and the land the best
we can

to add to the home
we share within us

set the table
prepare the meal
and may neither one
of us be cut

the cosmic within and without

BY TED VACA
YOU MIGHT WANT


to think deeply
about where you
come from

To Think Deeply About Where You Come From

TO
THINK		DEEPLY
ABOUT	       WHERE
YOU		COME

FROM

to think
deeply
about

to open the eternal
gold-fringe lined
burgundy curtain
on the stage manager's signal

let the show begin
step upon the stage
stomach in turmoil
mind electric
your eyes 
             wide wild
             and excited

to accept what is
within 
                            is without

to accept what is
                                            without is within

the universe  s
                 s            p
               l                  i
                      a   r      


out and in
unfolds engulfs
consistently for a manufactured
lineage of time

the universe
                              doesn’t care about
                                                                     TIME

time manmade	           time the cursor
from birth to death	   and how much
                                           can you accomplish

time the accomplishment

                                            measure of worth and meaning

time the killer the waste of

                                           the sought after for proof of
                                           deeds and diplomas

the microscopic 
                                            is 	C O S M I C
the cosmic is
                                                      microscopic

the embryo in their sack 

utero evolving galaxies

spinning and star beings
born in a chemical-chance
at becoming only to be seen
in awe by the dark matter
that surrounds

Incomprehensible!

our eternal selfs
witnessed
mirrored not above
not below 
but all around

breaking the novelty of direction
the compass explodes and the earthly mind
is set free of dimensions then intuned with the way
then again becoming unknown
as a dream
separated
from the expansion

we’ve not far to go
to reach & realize

Ted Vaca, Denver poet father lover crime fighter / semi holy somewhat sweet can be bitter / published here and there / Founder of The Mercury Cafe poetry slam / Coach of the 2006 Championship Denver Slam Team / Member of 1995 Championship slam team from Asheville NC / Intergalactic Provocateur

Diagnosis | Brian Dickson

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Image: Christin Wurst

Diagnosis

Outside the men’s restroom
at Union Station
trench coats heaped
next to skis.

Inside the pile
I am a carpet beetle
minding the pockets.

Outside the pile
I am the custodian with
a side gig selling the larvae
to the chocolate-covered-
insect food truck,
The Smooth Thorax.

Brian Dickson (he/him/his): When not teaching at the Community College of Denver, Brian avoids driving as much as possible to traipse around the front range region by foot, bike, bus or train with kids in tow. Somehow he also serves as an editor for New Feathers Anthology as well.

Two Poems | Tyler Hurula

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Image: Pawel Czerwinski

What’s Left

Maybe I should stop
writing about glitter—
but sometimes I wonder

if it’s the only proof
still clinging to what’s left
of us. Do you miss

the sparkle of my eye
shadow? Golden branded
butterfly kisses fluttered

onto your gilded cheeks.
I guess I just like shiny things
that stay. Like a shimmery

permanence, or a luster
memento of everything
I’ve loved enough to touch.

Another Period Poem

Fucking someone should be easy,
but I’m on my period
on a first date, and I want

to negotiate a scene—
but not that one from The Shining.
So anyway, a man walks into a bar

and I’m bleeding. He says I’m happy
you decided to meet, and my smile
lacks sparkle because I’m just here

for the ride, and one of us knows
that’s not going to happen.
I order something fruity with a tiny

umbrella. My cherry red lipstick ghosts
into the soft red bar-light glow.
I’m on his lap when I say we’re not

having sex. He puts his hands up—
a surrender, says I’d just like to kiss you,
and we do until I’m kissing

him with my eyes open: bored and waiting
for the punchline. An older man
walks into a bar, and I’m still bleeding.

He says I don’t drink but looks thirsty.
I savor the thought of being a novelty,
but he looks everywhere but me

and his fingers fidget, never reach
for mine. He walks me home
and doesn’t invite himself in.

A woman walks into a coffee shop,
it’s a week and a half later and I’m still
bleeding. I’m cursing the bloated

baggage of the breakup that brought
this all on. She says I’d like to kiss you,
and we do and she leaves. I want to feel

something, will myself to exchange
numbness for lust. I’m empty and aching
to be filled by something like soft

hands. The boy made of sand
let himself be swallowed
by a gentler sea. I wish

instead of blood I could bury
him under the rough
sheets of some unknown

bed. I don’t want to write
another poem about this boy
or my period,

but I guess I’ll opt for the latter
because it’s the one that always comes
back.

Tyler Hurula (she/her) is a poet born and raised in Denver, Colorado. She is queer, polyamorous, and lives with her wife and two cats. Author of Love Me Louder (Querencia Press). Her poems have been published previously in Anti-Heroin Chic, Aurum Journal, Quail Bell Magazine, Gnashing Teeth Publishing, and more. She values connection, authenticity, and vulnerability, and tries to encompass these values in her writing as well as everyday life.

Three Poems | Aimee Herman

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Image: Michal Matlon

removed

Trae sang Frank Sinatra to my left as the doctor removed a drain from my right.


I wasn’t ready to look down yet.  


Later, I apologized for the blood I leaked onto the paper, covering my doctor’s white leather chair.  


I’m sorry for my mess, I said, an apology with a footnote, of which the dissertation is still being written.  


With compression off for the first time in eight days, I assemble as much oxygen as I can.  I inhale 


the width of North America and exhale four decades in this body.  


My eyes unclench; they are not fists.  


The doctor praises my body, her work.  


You are an artist, Trae says to her.  


Slowly, I drop my head.  


My chest is my favorite book pulled open to the best part.  


It is flat, bruised. Nipples like squashed berries on the sidewalk, sort of charred and uncertain.  


I have survived this pain. And my new chest is  
                                                                                                                       beginning

a narrative therapy exhibition

part one.

Debra, my therapist, writes me a letter to prove medical necessity for bilateral mastectomy. I become  a card catalogue of mental distress, two disorders and a dysphoria. The letter calls me consistently  depressive; suddenly, I feel so seen. Why must we demonstrate our unwellness for health insurance  assistance when no man has to take a photograph of his flaccid penis in order to qualify for erection  renewal.

part two.

Strobe light images of sensations and feelings. My feminist hides, squinting every letter into a scared  pill bug. My body is a neighbor I wave hello to, with preference to keep our conversations no longer  than a nod. We pretend we are strangers; it is better this way. There was a time before I flinched. Before  I looked at men and thought about their penises as bullet holes left in women’s bodies. Before what I  wore became a billboard for who I was, how I identified, rather than just cotton and comfort. Before  my dentist declared all the reasons my teeth were complicated derelicts: drugs, lack of flossing, all  those panic attacks and New Jersey water. Before my body had scars named after the men, named  after the meds, named after me. Before that HPV diagnosis. Before that colposcopy where my  girlfriend and I watched my cervix projected on a screen as though it were the star of a new sitcom  about genital warts and bad decisions. Before my body became a crime scene or the DSM-5 or a chalk  outline of a former life or a tear-soaked handkerchief or a protest poem or a ghost or a  misunderstanding 

or a question mark.

footnote

It comes back. It threads itself into the thin skin of my eyelids, jackhammers itself against my chest,  creeps into the wax in my ears. It has been cut out, but it comes back. It has been drowned out with  liquor and hops, but it swims to shore. It has been numbed with powders, chemicals, pickpocketed  medicine cabinets; it keeps waking back up. It. It is genetic. It is unruly, unpredictable. It does not care  you do yoga now or pretend to meditate. It has no interest in what you call yourself now, how you  (try to) see yourself now. It is not going away. It. It stops you from getting jobs, from believing in  yourself, from maintaining friendships, from committing to most things. It starts fights. It. It carries  a switchblade. It. It cannot be quieted by pharmaceuticals; in fact, it dares you to try that again. It does  not cower under doctor’s orders. It hates the term self-care. It is the most persistent part of you. It is  the one element of you that has not given up. It. It. It has locked your doors and windows, so forget  trying to walk out. It reminds you (in case you have forgotten) how worthless you are. It. It expects  nothing of you. It. It. It. It is immune to surgery and sermons. It may will never go away. It. It. It. It.  It. It. It. It. It. It. It. It. It. It. It. It. It. It. It. It. It. It. It. It. It. It. It. It. It. It. It. It. It. It. It. It. It. It. It.

Aimee Herman is a queer, nonbinary educator and writer. They are the author of two books of poetry and the novel “Everything Grows”. In addition, their work can be found in journals and anthologies such as BOMB, cream city review, and “Troubling the Line: Trans and Genderqueer Poetry and Poetics“. They currently host a monthly open mic in Boulder called Queer Art Organics. Aimee is extremely enamored with libraries, ukuleles, and the moon.

Hymnal of the Heaven-Stormer // Connor Khalil Marvin

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Image: Adismara Putri

Hymnal of the Heaven-Stormer

BY CONNOR KHALIL MARVIN

I.
When God looks into the marble slab of me,
She sees Herself. Chisel and hammer in hand,
She is the One who shapes me, chipping away
all that is not Her.

My insides have grown tired
of this furtive distance.
She’s so close, that’s why I can’t see Her.
Closer to me than Myself.

My throbbing wound, oh my gentle perfection,
dots on a grid. Lines between dots. Rippling,
all glowing, rippling. A single jewel
in a 350 degree mirror. Looking like a net.
I’m caught, gasping for water
as She pulls me from the ocean,
into the blinding light.
There is no such thing as “eventually.”
It has already happened.

I strain the kingdom’s rock.
I lift myself in two.
My armor pales in comparison
to my Self. I’m a pit-mine,
stripped-down for change. I’m wheat seeds,
ground to flower by the millstone of the stars.
When it’s i that speaks, it’s really I that speaks.
Say My Name. Ir-Rahman. My breath
breathes through every living point.
My particle wind, My immaculate gravity.
My hammer made of kindness
meets my chisel made of wine.

Feel yourself baptized,
chisel’s kiss
met
drunken shrine.

II.
When I lay down to sleep I pray my heart stays awake.
Gabriel come and tear my heart from my chest,
replace it with a holy vinyard, so all might drink
and become quenched.
Home is where the heat is
hear the bells ring forest bliss, my God
please hope my supple sin and
consecrate my wand with light.
My God! As who, what voice, where from,
drenched in Sunday, stuffed with lion-blood,
tackled to the brine with fishnet gravity.
Give me gravity. Bring wine to orbit me.
Bring thrones to bow before. Bring doorways
arched filigree, gilded dew. My God!
I remember when Dionysus swarmed.
I remember the ivy on my head. Thyrsus high.
I am a hole in Krishna’s flute
that the Christ’s breath moves through.
Listen to this music.
I am a concert from the mouth of every milkmaid
singing with the myriad chorus.
My aura is drunk. My wake is oblivion.
My tenderest melody bruising hearts.
Make me a vine, make me a grape,
make me a press, make me a cask,
make me a cup, bring Yourself to my lips
so Your taste might stay forever
on mine. Pass me around
this squalid wasteland of Puritans
until reveling takes the night
and lights it on fire. Let the howl
of the Maenads, the Gopis –
frolic and playful, gasping and wild-eyes –
tear down the black curtain
and shred it forever.

Connor Khalil Marvin is a poet, instructor, and ritual specialist based in Golden, Colorado. He currently works as a house witch at Ritualcravt. He teaches contemplative and spiritual practice through his own platform as well as through the Ritualcravt School. He is also a professional Talismaner as Merlin’s Workshop. He has represented Denver at the National Poetry Slam championship four times, and was the Mercury Café 2017 Grand Slam Champion. His first full-length poetry book is out on Albion-Andalus Press, available at most online book retailers. He tries to avoid opinions and welcomes the annihilation of belief by direct experience.

Hands | Jessica Mehta

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Image: Jorge Lopez

Hands

The delight I take in watching my hands
age—endless. They are my grandmother’s
ridged veins, branches I thought long
gone to mill-dust. Slowly, dorsals
become paper, a crinkling of tissue
crepe marking birthdays. So, Doctor, tell me
again how Restylane will plump
them back to beauty. Make them youthful, dewy
again. Erase my years, the dogged
ones of clawing in & digging up, out,
free. Doctor, explain once
more how “hands don’t lie”—
you think I don’t know that? These hands
speak everything, flutter just truths.
They say, These lines
are wages earned, liver spots bonuses
clocked, tendons popped
with wisdom. In these hands are carried
the entirety of me: my cells cupped
by my mother, her mother, the whole
trail-weary tribe from Oklahoma and Cherokee
rose roads back. Doctor, you want
to rewind these hands with yours?
I handle my own unraveling,
shaking arthritic thumbs and all.

Jessica Mehta is a multi-award-winning poet and author of the Oregon Book Award finalist collection “When We Talk of Stolen Sisters.” As a citizen of the Cherokee Nation, space, place, and ancestry in post-colonial “America” informs much of their work. You can learn more at www.thischerokeerose.com.

my ghost considers music | Ashley Howell Bunn

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Image: Christina Deravedisian

my ghost considers music

now so often twinkling between the walls of my home
—————–moving and stopping abruptly, a dance and fall

when embodied i almost didn’t notice
——————how it changed the vibration in the air ——poetry moves the tide of emotion
=======================================================-this, i noticed

===========–for my body was water —— adherent

but spirit
spirit

is this other element without ground or liquid or oxygen or heat
——————spirit is
but ether
ether ———————is my best bet
———-as i let my ghost consider what moves through me

there are notes like cold rain, sleet in early spring
——————and campfires in late summer
cool autumn mornings with golden aspen coins

——————and there is heartbreak, the thought of him leaving
my father’s hand softening ———– the strands loose from her braided hair

something about flowers —–and how long they last

Ashley Howell Bunn (she/they) completed her MFA in poetry through Regis University and holds a MA in Literature from Northwestern University. Their work has previously appeared in The Colorado Sun, Twenty Bellows, patchwork litmag, Mulberry Literary, Tiny Spoon, Champagne Room Journal and others. She is an experienced yoga guide trained in a variety of styles. Their first chapbook, in coming light, was published in 2022 by Middle Creek Publishing. She leads somatic writing workshops and writes a monthly Yoga, Tarot, and Astrology column for Writual.They are a founding member of The Tejon Collective, an inclusive creative space in Denver, CO.

a worm | Yuu Ikeda

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Image: Ivan Ivanovič

a worm

lethargic hope
is limping in the bottom
of my mind,
like a worm is creeping
on the floor.
it never allows me
to give up on everything.
it leads me to dawn
again and again.

Yuu Ikeda (she/they) is a Japan based poet. She loves writing, reading novels, western art, and sugary coffee.She writes poetry on her website: https://poetryandcoffeedays.wordpress.com/. Her latest poetry collection “A Knife She Holds” was published from Newcomer Press. Her Twitter and Instagram : @yuunnnn77

Two Poems | Andrej Bilovsky

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Image: Bruno Mira

Factoring

I did not see the naked man on King Street.
He was one of those “Nudes for God.”
Instead, Jacob slides in like a snail on pink slime.
wailing, as high-pitched as a gibbon.

He rubs his puckered eyes roughly.
And his jelly-mouth ripples in the clock face.
Five in the morning detaches itself from time.
His kiss unties me though it smells of dead cologne.

I am only here so I can be here when he’s here.
My secret life continues it existence in him.
But he’s kin to a decomposed insect.
I squeeze his innards into a likeness of myself.

Well-Spread

There are parts of me everywhere.
Like curled up on a park bench.
Or preaching the dead cult of sex.
Or naked and looking for work.

I deserve breeze but reap the stillness.
My gloomy fire begins as ashes.
In the reading room of the public library,
that’s my head opened wide at page 3.

Herman Melville spits in my ear.
I follow a handsome man into a doctor’s office.
I slink into a movie theater, drink out of an army boot.
Snow or gay bar, the flakes prove inconclusive.

Andrej Bilovsky (he/him) is a gay poet and performance artist. Former editor of Masculine-Feminine and Kapesnik. His poetry can be found at the Quiver and Down In The Dirt.

Fog // David Dephy

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Image: Nathan Anderson

Fog

BY DAVID DEPHY

Fog lies low over the land.
Rain drives soft across the fields.
Comatose landscape.

There is nothing immediate we can hope for,
now we have nothing to do but breathe,
until something better shows up.

We are holding each other,
expecting a miracle at dawn,
as if there were no one and nothing to hurt us.

Beginning in mid-May the nights draw in,
our look turns warm and soft,
the fog passes gently over us,

we’d like to ask the fog—
don’t talk to us, our heart’s been broken,
we can’t listen to you, we can’t see you,

but the fog covers us and says:
I never see myself either,
in my own mind I’m invisible,

that’s why you may feel I’m almighty,
you are like birds, your flight
begins and ends in silence,

you will find yourselves in each other only,
silence is garden, among the growing dreams
and precious wishes

you will discover each other again,
everything that will ever be discovered,
already exists in the mist.

David Dephy (he/him) (pronounced as “DAY-vid DE-fee”), is an American award-winning poet and novelist. The founder of Poetry Orchestra, a 2023 Pushcart Prize nominee for Brownstone Poets, an author of full-length poetry collection Eastern Star (Adelaide Books, NYC, 2020), and A Double Meaning, also a full-length poetry collection with co-author Joshua Corwin, (Adelaide Books, NYC, 2022).  His poem, “A Sense of Purpose,” is going to the moon in 2024 by The Lunar Codex, NASA, Space X, and Poetry on Brick Street. He is named as Literature Luminary by Bowery Poetry, Stellar Poet by Voices of Poetry, Incomparable Poet by Statorec, Brilliant Grace by Headline Poetry & Press and Extremely Unique Poetic Voice by Cultural Daily. He lives and works in New York City.